Renaissance

Renaissance: Beginnings• AD 1350s to 17001. Mongols reopen Silk Road

– Marco Polo visits China, returns to Europe, writes a book

• Causes people to want to go there and get Chinese goods

2. Positives of Black Death– No damage to farmland, goods,

metals– People are happy to be alive and

spend money to erase memories of the plague (Medici Family)

3. Ottoman Turks conquer Byzantine Empire

– Scholars flee to Italy with ancient texts of the Greeks and Romans

Renaissance: Italy

• Major trading cities: Milan, Florence, Genoa, Venice

• Florence wealthy from wool and banking– Medici family were bankers with political

power• Hired artists and architects to make Florence great

Renaissance: People

• Focus on humans and their abilities and actions (humanism)

•Machiavelli wrote The Prince

•Said rulers should be mean instead of nice•“End justifies the Means”

Humanism4

• Really an old idea from Ancient Greece and Rome• Based on the Socratic and Platonic ideas of

observation and reasoning• Idea that man, not God, was the center of the

universe• Man controls his own destiny• Man can learn about and understand his world by

observation and reason without God’s help• Helped spark a new age of secular learning and

the development of early modern schools and universities such as Oxford and Cambridge

• Led many to question both governments and the institutional Church

How did the Renaissance change thought?

Before After

Focus on Afterlife Focus on this life

The Individual not important The Individual is important

Little focus on learning and

the arts

Focus on learning the “Classics” (The Iliad, Aristotle) to inspire learning and the arts

“Dark” Ages “Rebirth”

Age of “Faith” Age of Reason

Renaissance: Across Europe

• People came to Italy to learn and spread ideas across Europe– Northern Europe focused

more on history of Christianity and less on Greeks and Romans

• Northern European artwork looked more real with more scenes from nature than Italian artwork

Renaissance: Michelangelo• Wrote poetry, carved sculptures, painted

ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci

• Sculptor, architect, town planner, inventor, engineer, mapmaker, painted Mona Lisa

Renaissance: Math/Science

• Square root symbol, plus sign, minus sign

• Earth moves around sun

(Copernicus, Galileo)

Renaissance: Gutenberg

• Johan Gutenberg invents printing press with moveable type.– Learning spreads faster than ever before